On a cold Wednesday lunchtime, the ever intrepid and awe-inspiring Manglers (@themanglersjazz on insta- get the badge in) piled onto a train bound for this year’s tour destination, ready for three days full of sun, sea, sand and sax. Sadly, we seemed to have got somewhat lost in our quest for warmer climes and ended up instead in the fine Viking city of York.

Tour, shepherded by the steady hands of Freddie Farago and Oli Matthews, began in the traditional manner, with no music whatsoever being performed on Wednesday, and the entire group piling into the nearest Spoons for an evening of general entertainment and attempts to steal watermelons.

Thursday was shockingly also cold yet featured the Manglers’ busking debut on the mean streets of Yorkshire’s fair city (only after our first two spots had been taken due to the necessity of an 11am meet time, owing to a few too many £2.50 pints in the Nag’s Head). Highlights from this busking session included a particularly smooth version of The Chicken, James Robinson going against his tour role by in fact not dancing with somebody, and me wearing an extremely fetching leopard print dress as a jumper (?) (thanks for that Woody). After an hour of getting increasingly cold, the Manglers cunningly decided that was enough music for the day and scattered in search of the finest watering holes that the city had to offer. The day was capped off by a Noah’s ark-esque struggle to corral everyone (18 people) into a small Mexican restaurant, only for our amazing President to tell us after he sat down that actually “he’d prefer to eat somewhere else”. Some president…

The evening ended in the most Manglers way possible, with the ultras of the group gracing the revolving dancefloor of Pop World, and the more sensible members of the group (or the train enthusiasts, you decide), having an early night so as to make the most of the huge Friday to come.

Friday proved to be the biggest day of tour so far, with an early(ish) morning wake-up for a visit to the world-famous National Railway Museum. After an hour spent mostly wishing the ground would swallow me whole, the Manglers again decided that the people of York needed to hear us (not least because they’d given us £140 for our troubles on Thursday, although that might have been them asking us to stop?) and descended en masse onto Parliament Street to play not one, not two, not three, but four Bruno Mars songs in just 35 minutes. For anyone who has heard the Manglers before, this will not come as a surprise.

This busking session featured some incredible highlights, such as a fifteen second scat solo complimented by some fine interpretive dancing from Daisy and Freddie, three twelve-year-olds attempting to smash a football into David’s drums and some truly gorgeous feedback from the vocal amp, but this was all in all the Manglers’ musical highlight of the tour, with a sizeable crowd by the close of play. A lovely bar crawl through York followed in the evening, complimented by the world’s angriest pub singer, the sad death of Daisy’s watermelon and the Manglers failing to enter not one but two of York’s nightclubs (we couldn’t get into Pop World, which really does have to be described as a low point).

On Saturday morning, extremely sleep-deprived, the Manglers waved goodbye to the city of York, having had, all jokes aside, an excellent tour filled with questionable music, questionable outfits, but a lot of fun. Special thanks must go to Freddie Farago and Oli Matthews for organising the 3 day spectacular, and Moog Clyde for MD’ing us to being described as “quite good, actually”, by several passers-by. The Manglers will be back, with maybe even five Bruno Mars songs this time (if you’re lucky) for the annual Charity gig on 8^th March, so save the date!

Image: The Manglers